To What Extent Biomass Burning Aerosols Impact South America Seasonal Climate Predictions?

Freire, Julliana L. M.; Longo, Karla M.; Freitas, Saulo R.; Coelho, Caio A. S.; Molod, Andrea; Marshak, Jelena; Silva, Arlindo da; Ribeiro, Bruno Z.

doi:10.1029/2020gl088096

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 53 publications

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“…Predictions of the expected climate conditions for the next 3 to 6 months, which are known as seasonal predictions, are relevant for planning activities of a number of sectors, including agricultural and energy production. In order to advance the current practices for the production of seasonal predictions in South America, a number of studies have been conducted including (a) the investigation of procedures for combining and calibrating predictions produced with different climate models including rainy seasonal onset predictions (Coelho et al, 2017;Rodrigues et al, 2019;Osman et al, 2021), (b) the assessment of prediction quality produced by dynamical and empirical (statistical) climate models (Gubler et al, 2020), and (c) the investigation of the importance of considering biomass burning aerosols for improving the representation of the observed seasonal climate conditions (Freire et al, 2020).…”

Section: Wp -Predictability and Predictionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Potential applications for climate services originated from the CLIMAX project

Cavalcanti

Coelho²,

Rezende³

et al. 2022

Front. Clim.

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CLIMAX (Climate Services Through Knowledge Co-Production: A Euro-South American Initiative For Strengthening Societal Adaptation Response to Extreme Events) was an international project funded by FAPESP-Belmont forum developed during the 2016–2021 period. Germany, France, Netherlands, Argentina/France and Brazil were the international partners who worked in common objectives and tasks. The project was composed of four main Work Packages (WP), which interacted to achieve the final goal of developing potential applications to climate services. Here, some of the researches and results conducted by the team in Brazil, aiming at the application by climate services in several sectors, mainly in the energy sector are presented, some including international partners collaborations. The WP0—Co-design and Co-Production of Knowledge, was developed in collaboration with the energy sector, the National Operator of Electric System (ONS). Climate research activities were conducted through interactions between climate researchers, energy sector personnel and social scientists, focusing on applications. WP1—Physical processes explaining climate variability in South America, aimed to study the remote and regional features associated with precipitation extremes over South America, with emphasis on regions where the main hydrographic basins are located. WP2—Predictability and Prediction tools developed several studies, mainly at the sub-seasonal timescale, which was a timescale identified to be useful for ONS. WP3—Social processes explaining climate information appropriation was composed of social scientists and had the mission of producing a characterization of the electric sector. Here, some of the WP1 and WP2 results are summarized, illustrating the potential applications. WP0 and WP3 results are presented in other papers.

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Section: Wp -Predictability and Predictionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Potential applications for climate services originated from the CLIMAX project

Cavalcanti

Coelho²,

Rezende³

et al. 2022

Front. Clim.

Self Cite

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Ocean-Land Atmosphere Model (OLAM) performance for major extreme meteorological events near the coastal region of southern Brazil

Souza

Silva

2021

Clim. Res.

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Coastal regions are generally densely populated and have become highly vulnerable to the occurrence of extreme events. In recent years, Brazil’s southern coastal region has been affected by several different extreme weather events that have caused coastal flooding, with economic losses as well as fatalities. Understanding and improving the predictability of these events has become a major issue for the local population. In this study, state-of-the-art numerical modeling was applied to this region to assess the ability of the Ocean-Land Atmosphere Model to represent major extreme events. The model was applied to the region with a high-resolution grid refinement technique capable of simultaneously representing global and local atmospheric phenomena. The main events that affected Brazil’s southern coastal region between 2000 and 2018 were identified and then simulated. All selected events were associated with cyclonic and/or anticyclonic systems near the coastal region of the study area. Those systems were responsible for bringing heavy rain, strong winds and sea level rise, causing impacts for the coastal region. The results of the numerical simulations were compared with observational data to evaluate model performance. The model simulated well the air temperature and wind fields. Correlation values for sea level pressure were high despite a maximum positive bias of approximately 2 hPa. Precipitation presented a negative bias for most events. Finally, the results show that the methodology allowed for a detailed representation of sensible and latent heat fluxes for the region, allowing a better representation of local mesoscale features.

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Seasonal variations in fire conditions are important drivers in the trend of aerosol optical properties over the south-eastern Atlantic

et al. 2022

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Abstract. From June to October, southern Africa produces one-third of the global biomass burning (BB) emissions by widespread fires. BB aerosols are transported westward over the south-eastern Atlantic with the mid-tropospheric winds, resulting in significant radiative effects. Ascension Island (ASI) is located midway between Africa and South America. From June 2016 to October 2017, a 17-month in situ observation campaign on ASI found a low single-scattering albedo (SSA) as well as a high mass absorption cross-section of black carbon (MACBC), demonstrating the strong absorbing marine boundary layer in the south-eastern Atlantic. Here we investigate the monthly variations of critical optical properties of BB aerosols, i.e. SSA and MACBC, during the BB seasons and the driving factors behind these variations. Both SSA and MACBC increase from June to August and decrease in September and October. The average SSA during the BB seasons is 0.81 at 529 nm wavelength, with the highest mean ∼ 0.85 in October and the lowest ∼ 0.78 in August. The absorption enhancement (Eabs) derived from the MACBC shows similar trends with SSA, with the average during the whole of the BB seasons at ∼ 1.96 and ∼ 2.07 in 2016 and 2017, respectively. As the Eabs is higher than the ∼ 1.5 commonly adopted value by climate models, this result suggests the marine boundary layer in the south-eastern Atlantic is more absorbing than model simulations. We find the enhanced ratio of BC to CO (ΔBC/ΔCO, equal to BC/ΔCO as the BC background concentration is considered to be 0) is well correlated with SSA and MACBC, providing a simple way to estimate the aerosol optical characteristics in the south-eastern Atlantic. The exponential function we proposed can approximate SSA and MACBC with BC/ΔCO, and when BC/ΔCO is small it can capture the rapid growth of SSA as BC/ΔCO decreases. BC/ΔCO is influenced by combustion conditions and aerosol scavenging. From the analysis of the location of BB, the primary source fuel, the water content in the fuel, combined with the mean cloud cover and precipitation in the transport areas of the BB plume, we conclude that the increase in BC/ΔCO from June to August is likely to be caused by burning becoming more flaming. The reduction in the water content of fuels may be responsible for the change in the burning conditions from June to August. The decrease in BC/ΔCO in September and October may be caused by two factors, one being a lower proportion of flaming conditions, possibly associated with a decrease in mean surface wind speed in the burning area, and the other being an increase in precipitation in the BB transport pathway, leading to enhanced aerosol scavenging, which ultimately results in an increase in SSA and MACBC.

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To What Extent Biomass Burning Aerosols Impact South America Seasonal Climate Predictions?

Cited by 3 publications

References 53 publications

Potential applications for climate services originated from the CLIMAX project

Potential applications for climate services originated from the CLIMAX project

Ocean-Land Atmosphere Model (OLAM) performance for major extreme meteorological events near the coastal region of southern Brazil

Seasonal variations in fire conditions are important drivers in the trend of aerosol optical properties over the south-eastern Atlantic

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